Deboned Stuffed Chicken

Dinner Nov 15, 2024

Note: I'm not sure about the cook time and temperature, I think the breast portion might have been just overcooked. It wasn't dry, but it looked like it could have been. Next time, I think I'll try cracking the lid so that I don't have to take the lid off and cook for longer to get the skin to brown.

Ingredients:

2 lbs Spinach

2 Portobello Mushrooms

1 sprig Rosemary

4 sprigs Thyme

1 Whole Chicken

2 cloves Garlic

1 large Onion

1 Carrot

Kosher Salt

Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Unsalted Butter

Directions:

Wash and roughly chop the spinach. Cook on medium-low in a large skillet with a little butter and seasoned with salt and pepper.

While spinach cooks, wash and roughly chop the mushroom caps. Once spinach is fully cooked, remove from skillet and set aside. Add some more butter and the mushrooms. Add the whole rosemary and thyme sprigs and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Once mushrooms are cooked, drain any liquid that had collected with the spinach as it sat and add spinach back to skillet. Mince garlic and stir into spinach/mushroom mix. Remove from heat and let sit in the warm skillet as you debone the chicken so more moisture may evaporate.

Preheat oven to 425°F (220°C)

Follow Jacques Pépin's video to debone chicken.

Season the inside of the chicken with salt and pepper, add spinach mix, and tie chicken up with butcher sting using following Pépin's video.

Chop onion into large chunks. Peel carrot and chop into 1½ inch long pieces.

Add onion, carrot, and 2 tablespoons butter to the bottom of a dutch oven. Place tied up chicken on top. Cover with lid and cook for an hour. Uncover and cook till browned, 15-20 minutes.

Remove chicken from dutch oven by the strings. Use the immersion blender to blend the onion, carrot, and drippings into a sauce.

Final Notes:

Deboning:

Was easier to do than I expected! My first time took me 50 minutes, and it felt like a lot of that time was me trying to wiggle my hands back into the gloves I was wearing after taking them off multiple times.

I wore gloves to be able to touch my computer (to pause Pépin's video) and phone (for progress pictures). I could see myself wearing them as long as I need to follow along with the video, but it felt like it would have been easier to do everything with bare hands. The gloves shifted on my hands and bunched in places that made gripping the chicken a bit more difficult.

Pulling bones away from the meat was much easier than I expected it to be, but the meat also got more mutilated than I was expecting, guess that's a professional vs. first timer. If you're meeting too much resistance while trying to pull a bone out, there's likely a tendon that needs to be cut.

Saving the bones to make a stock helps me feel less bad about taking more meat out with the bones than Pépin does.

End result:

The filling stayed together really well! So did the chicken, even after cutting.

I see a lot more deboned and stuffed chickens in the future, different fillings are going to be fun to play with!